by Beth Ain
“So Jules is not the boss?” Abby asks.
“The only boss here is me,” says Ms.Leon. Everyone laughs at this, except Charlotte, who still isn’t paying attention to anything at all.
“Okay, try and put yourself in a category here and don’t worry if it isn’t the only thing you’re good at,” Ms. Leon says.
I have no idea which of these groups I fit into, so I am especially glad to be the narrator right now, since it is very embarrassing when everyone is moving all around and you have no idea where you fit in. Everybody finds their way into a group, except Elinor. “Jules,” Ms. Leon says, “why don’t you work with Elinor to find a group?”
“Entertainers,” I say without even thinking for one second. This is the group where there will be hooting and hollering, I think.
“Jules,” Elinor says, “maybe maths?” Elinor says maths because that is what they say in London for math.
“Nah,” I say. “Entertainers will be more fun.”
“No,” she says.
“What if I tell you it would help a lot with my supersecret side project?” I ask.
“How is that possible?” she asks.
“It just is,” I say.
“Jules, there is no way I am going to be an entertainer. That’s your thing,” she says.
Until this second, I never ever not even once thought of myself as an entertainer, and I didn’t realize I had a thing.
“Well, what’s your thing, then?” I ask. “Is there anything that would make you happy?” When this comes out of my mouth, it sounds much meaner than it sounded when it was in my head.
Elinor shrugs and looks like she’s going to cry, but she doesn’t and I am relieved, because if I ever made Elinor cry, then I would cry, and everyone in the room would think we were a couple of crybabies. “Why don’t I just be whatever you think I should be? That’s pretty much the way things work, isn’t it?”
Even though it sounds like Elinor is mad at me, I think she isn’t. I think something is bothering her and maybe it’s the same something that is making her sad, even when she seems happy. I want to talk to my mom about this, but it is only the afternoon and I have to get all the way through the rest of school and the whole entire read through before I can talk to her about anything, and by then I will probably forget that this happened in the first place.
“Well, so just try out the entertainers and if it doesn’t work, we’ll think of something.” I give her a little push in the direction of Charlotte. The two of them just stand there looking very unhappy together. I look around the room at all the groups and I try to picture myself as the line in one of those connect-the-dots pictures in dentist-office magazines. I picture dot after dot after dot, all trying to be one simple picture of a girl and her parasol, and I feel tired. This seems like a lot for one person to do.
Ms. Leon’s voice has some good news. “Ah!” she says. “I forgot the best part . . . we are going to end our ‘Small Moments in Our Community’ skit with a big moment— a song from The Sound of Music, ‘So Long, Farewell.’ Our espectáculo needs a big finale!”
Yes, it does, I think. We have been learning these songs all spring in music class. The whole class lets out a cheer, even Charlotte and Elinor, the sad-face twins.
We practice for a while, and Ms. Leon helps us write down the small moment each group will talk about. I think this is basically another way of saying what we learned in second grade, since a small moment is kind of like a memory of something that happened.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Charlotte singing and dancing and pretending to be Maria von Trapp all over the place. The entertainers’ small moment is about learning the songs of The Sound of Music, so they are going to act out a little bit of “Do-Re-Mi,” with Charlotte leading. The problem for me is that it seems like Elinor only has one little part, singing, “Fa — a long, long way to run.” Having Charlotte boss her all around is NOT going to cheer her up.
I decide to meddle, which is another good vocabulary word I learned from the treatment. “I think Elinor should have a bigger role,” I say.
“No, that’s okay,” Elinor says. “I like it back here, and anyway, I chose that line. It’s my favorite.”
“Yeah, Jules,” Charlotte says.
I feel embarrassed because everyone is looking at me and this makes me very mad. “I think that you are not a very good Maria von Trapp,” I say. “And Elinor has her real accent, so maybe she should be the main star of the skit, and maybe you should make pinch pots with artists or something so no one has to hear you talk.”
“Jules Bloom!” Ms. Leon says now.
“I don’t want to be the main star, Jules,” Elinor says. “Charlotte is pretty good at it, anyway.”
“How about an apology, Jules?” Ms.Leon says.
“Sorry,” I mutter to Charlotte, even though I am really not sorry, especially since Charlotte made Elinor take her side.
Charlotte looks right at me now. “You are not sorry. You just want to be in control of everything and Ms. Leon did NOT make you the director. You are just a narrator, not even an actress.”
“All right,” Ms. Leon says, and she claps her hands, which is kind of a Maria von Trapp thing to do. “That’s enough for today,” Ms. Leon says. “Jules and Charlotte, you both need to go home and think about how you are going to work together. We only have one and a half days left to practice.”
“Why only one and a half?” I ask. I think we still have Friday and Monday.
“Monday is Field Day!” Ms. Leon says. She seems very happy about this.
“What’s Field Day?” Elinor asks.
“It’s a day filled with sports, sports, and more sports,” Teddy says. Field Day is not Teddy’s favorite day.
“And then we all get hosed down with freezing-cold water,” I say. I hate this part.
“Wow,” Elinor says, and she smiles this smile I have never seen on her before. Then she does this little jump in place, which she also never does, and it seems like Elinor is very excited about Field Day, which doesn’t make any sense at all since the only good thing about Hippity Hop races in the crazy-hot heat is the giant watermelon slice they give you when it’s all over.
Thankfully, the phone rings at this moment and it is for me.
“Jules,” Ms. Leon says while I pack up my things, “we’ll practice your introductions of each small moment when we go through the whole play tomorrow.”
I grab my bag and walk slowly toward the office, where my mom is waiting for me. I am especially glad to see her since I don’t feel very good about my fight with Charlotte.
“Excited?” she asks.
I shrug.
We hop in a cab and my mom is just about to turn off the TV that only runs ads and scary news broadcasts when I say, “Wait, don’t!”
She looks at the screen and we laugh. At the very same time, we say, “It’s Billy, the blond-haired, blue-eyed, bow-tie-wearing Swish boy!” We have no idea what Billy’s real name is, but he just looks like a Billy, and he really is so good at being the Swish boy. It is hard to look away.
The ad ends, and Billy does not spit out orange mouthwash all over the place like I did. He never does. Billy is perfect. I take off my rainbow sweatbands and press them against my eyes to hold back the tears. I want to turn this taxi around and go watch fake soccer instead.
dream families,
scheduling conflicts,
and the other new York City
“Jules,” my mom says, “take those things off your eyes. We’re here.”
When I get out of the taxi, things are blurry because I am nervous, and also because I am blinded by rainbow-sweatband pressure, but I can see well enough to know we have arrived at a very pretty house on the Upper East Side, which I hardly ever go to since we mostly only know people who live on the West Side. I also don’t know anyone who lives in an actual house — not an apartment — in the city, so I am very curious about this.
“Why aren’t we going to a studio?
” I ask as we walk up the steps to the front door.
“Colby told me that this show is based on the writer’s real life and that they wanted the cast to do the read-through in his house so you would understand the show better.”My mom looks at me. “Ready?”
I shrug again. My mouth is too dry to talk. I mash my sweatbands into a ball and squeeze the ball tight with my left hand, which makes me feel at least a little bit ready.
I find out three life-altering things the minute we walk into the dining room of the fanciest not-apartment I have ever seen:
1. Townhouses are not anything like apartments.
2. I get to miss school tomorrow because they want to do a full rehearsal before they shoot the pilot for real.
3. Billy the Swish boy is in the sitcom, too!
There are so many things going on in my head that I forget to be nervous for a minute. I smile and shake hands with everyone, and they are all so excited to meet me that I feel a little bit like a movie star! And then I meet Billy, whose name is not Billy. It is John McCarthy, which is kind of the opposite of Billy, if you think about it.
“Jordana!” I hear someone yell.
“What does everyone want?” I hear next, in a Southern accent, and then a tall teenage girl with blond curly hair comes over to us, looking at her phone the whole time. I would definitely walk into a wall if I tried to do this.
But Jordana doesn’t walk into a wall. She just looks at me quickly and says, “I’m Jordana, but you can call me Sydney, which is my Look at Us Now! name, but don’t get too used to that name since this show probably won’t last either, and we’ll all be someone else all over again.” She says all of this in a super-sweet voice that somehow feels like the opposite of sweet. It is very, very quiet for a minute.
“Okay,” John McCarthy says, clapping his hands together. “That was fun!”
His loud clap makes me blink that rainbow-sweatband blink, and I realize I have a question. “What is my name?” I ask. Everyone laughs. But the truth is, the treatment didn’t have any names in it.
“You are Sylvie,” John McCarthy says. “And I am Spencer, the mature older brother. Funny, right?”
“Hardly,” Jordana says over her phone. Then she puts it down at her side for the first time. “Anyway, you might be older than Sylvie, but you are younger than Sydney.”
“Middle child,” John McCarthy says. “I can handle it.” Then he nods big at my mom and they laugh, and I think I know what they are talking about but I’m not really sure, and none of it even matters because even though I am very afraid of Jordana and her phone and even though John McCarthy seems a little bit crazy . . .I KIND OF LOVE MY TV FAMILY.
We all sit down around a giganto table where there are scripts for each of us.
Jordana has the first line of the first episode. She says, “Sylvie, darling, would you mind getting me some tea?”
I think for a second that she is calling me Sylvie Darling, like Darling is my last name, and I am confused because I think our TV last name is Summers. Someone clears his throat and I snap out of it.
I am supposed to say, “How about you get your own tea, Sydney, darling?” which is something I would never really say in real life, and this makes the butterflies go flying around like crazy inside my body. I wish, wish, wish I could be Sylvie Darling — I mean Summers — instead of me.
I squeeze my rainbow-sweatband ball and say my line without stopping, but not with any sass because, well, because of the spaz situation. I am so worried that if I try to add any pizzazz at all, I will mess up, say a word wrong, or knock over someone’s tall icy drink. I think I am not doing a very good job, since they hired me for this show all because I spit out Swish Mouthwash all over the place and sang a jingle, and they probably were hoping I’d do more than just sit around a very big table and read.
We read through the lines very quickly, and people are making scribbling notes all over their scripts and flipping pages back and forth and all I am doing is concentrating on not getting anything wrong. It gets to be my turn again and next to my name there is a word in parentheses. It says, (sarcastically). I think my heart stops beating. Everyone is looking at me to say my line, but I don’t. I raise my hand instead, and everyone laughs a little bit. My mom looks over at me and nods a lot. She is always happy when I raise my hand.
“I don’t know what sarcastically means,” I say.
“Really, Jules, you don’t know what it means?” John McCarthy says really loud.“Great going!”
My heart stops beating again, AND my knees start shaking now.
“He’s kidding, Jules!” Jordana says. “He’s being sarcastic.”
“Oh!” I say. And I think I understand but my knees never stop shaking the whole rest of the time, and the only thing I am very happy about is that the rest of the words in parentheses are words like (with emotion) and (singing).
“Nice job, everyone,” the director says at last. I don’t remember his name even though everyone has said it a million times. “We will make some changes for tomorrow, so be at the studio bright and early to read them through. And then we rehearse for real.”
There are lots of good-byes that take a really long time, and all I want to do is get into my pajamas. Outside, we are back in the regular New York City, so when we get into a taxi, I open my window right away and look out at the street and look at everything in the pretty blue-gray light.
“You were really something today, Julesie,” my mom says. “I can’t believe how you read all those words and how you raised your hand like that. Did you have fun?”
“Kind of,” I say. “But it was hard, too.” I can’t look at my mom. My eyes are burning.
“Jules, look at me. Are you okay?” she asks.
“I’m tired!” I yell. I do not like yelling at my mom, but sometimes I feel like my body doesn’t have the energy not to yell.
“Hey,” she says. “I’m going to give you a pass for that one because it’s been a really long day, but being tired doesn’t make it okay to talk like that.”
“Sorry,” I say, and I really mean it, but my sorry still sounds a little bit like a yell.
“Go ahead and look out the window,” my mom says. Then she squeezes my hand until we get home.
I feel much better after I get showered and into my pajamas. I am reading a just-right for-my-reading-level book on the sofa when my mom says to my dad, “I heard that the Pinkertons are looking at houses on Long Island.”
“What’s Long Island?” I ask.
“It’s a suburb,” my dad says.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It means a regular place with cars and houses and backyards with jungle gyms, and basements underneath where kids can go and make all the mess they want,” my mom says, smiling.
“And shopping malls,” my dad says. “Lots and lots of shopping malls.”
“Like Florida?” I ask.
“Yes,” my mom says.
“Worse than Florida,” my dad says.
“Robby!” my mom says. “Jules, don’t listen to him. Daddy grew up on Long Island. You know this. He grew up in a nice town and now he likes living in the city because sometimes people like to do the opposite of what they are used to. Does that make sense?”
I can’t think of any time when I don’t want to do things exactly the way I always do them. “No,” I say.
“Well, anyway, I’m sure wherever the Pinkertons move will be lovely. I’m sure with the baby, they’ve just had it with the city, and I can certainly understand that,”she says.
I think my mom would like to go to a place with basements and backyards and my dad would definitely not, which is good, because the whole idea of changing something as big as where I live is just too much for me to even imagine.
“Teeth, Julesie,” my mom says. But while I am brushing my teeth, I start to think about Charlotte moving to the suburbs, and then I try to picture my life without Stinkytown, which is a little bit impossible because I can’t remembe
r not knowing her. I feel tears behind my eyes and they burn and I don’t want to cry, and I also smell the delicious smell of whatever my dad is cooking for grown-up dinner. Since he gets home too late to eat with us, I always have to wait until the next day to eat his creations.
I get under my covers and close my eyes and try to picture a basement, a magical place under the ground where you can hide and put on shows and make forts. I am interrupted by more garlicky smells coming from the hallway, and now all I can see is a glamorous restaurant with white tablecloths and clinking glasses and warm bread and pats of butter in the shape of seashells. I start to feel angry that all of this is going on without me.
I am supposed to wait for my mom to come and tuck me in, but I can’t. So I take some baby steps into the living room, holding my nose.
“Jules, what are you doing?” my dad asks.
I shrug. This is what I do now when I don’t have the right answer for something.
“I mean why are you holding your nose?” he asks.
“Because of the clinking glasses and the seashell butter and it just smells so good and I know you won’t let me eat with you,”I say. “And now I have to figure out how to be Sylvie and I have to figure out how to make Elinor hoot and holler and Charlotte might move to a place with basements and I will never even see her basement since we are not friends anymore!” I start to cry.
My mom looks at me. She is on the phone. She holds it out to me and I take it right away, since I know who is on the other end of that phone call.
I wait for Grandma Gilda to recognize my breathing.
“Eddie?” she says.
I nod. Our George and Eddie nicknames always make me feel better.
“Listen, I’m packing up my suitcase and hopping a flight in time for the moving-up show.” I let out a big breath. “So, for now, just do what I do — positive affirmations. Look at the mirror and say, ‘I am Jules Bloom and I can handle anything, even Stinkytown moving to the burbs.’ ”